Kids’ Needs Don’t Matter in “New Conversation” on Marriage

Last updated on: February 22, 2013 at 10:49 am by Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak

Kids’ Needs Don’t Matter in “New Conversation” on Marriage 2013-02-22T10:49:06-06:00 Rachael Popcak and Dr. Gregory Popcak

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“New Conversation on Marriage” Forbiding kids to mourn missing mom or dad?

(Why can infertile couples marry but homosexual couples can’t? Because infertility doesn’t redefine the natural rights of children.)

David Blankenhorn, the founder and director of the Institute for American Values is spearheading a so-called “new” conversation about marriage wherein marriage is allegedly strengthened by redefining it into oblivion.

On David’s Family Scholars Blog, Barry Deutsch, political cartoonist and longtime veteran of the war on marriage, admiringly posts the SCOTUS brief filed by attorneys Ted Olsen (former US Solicitor Gen under George W.) and David Boise in opposition to Prop 8, the California, voter-supported initiative that protected the traditional definition of marriage and is now under legal assault.

Olsen and Boise can barely contain their scorn for the Pro-Marriage side of the debate, but one part of the brief is especially offensive. They write, “Indeed, Proponents’ state-centric construct of marriage means that the State could constitutionally deny any infertile couple the right to marry, and could prohibit marriage altogether if it chose to pursue a society less committed to “responsible” procreation.”

What an incredibly offensive, intentional mischaracterization of the position of those who stand against the redefinition of marriage. It is blisteringly, intentionally, ignorant. Here is why they are wrong.

Unlike homosexual couples, infertile heterosexual couples can be married because (a) infertility can be treatable and (b) even when it isn’t, infertile couples can be married without having to necessarily insist that a children’s right to a mother AND a father is discriminatory.

By contrast, allowing same-sex marriage effectively requires the redefinition of the natural needs of the child to simply having “parent 1″ and “parent 2″ instead of “mother” and “father.” Every child naturally aches for both a mother and a father and every child deprived of one or the other is keenly aware of the absence. Same-sex marriage would require society, and mental health professionals in particular, to tell any child (not just children of homosexual parents) who is grieving the absence of either mother or father that their grief is irrational and unacceptable and–at best–a distant second to society’s need to appease the narcissistic desires of adults.

Apparently, in the “new” conversation on marriage, children should be seen and not heard.

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